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I got on the Nimitz highway behind a Toyota SUV with a decal on the back window which read “Future surfer on board.” A baby in diapers was hanging ten on a surfboard, his chubby little fingers outstretched in a classic two-fingered shaka, a Hawaiian gesture.
Ray and I were both stationed at police headquarters downtown as homicide detectives for District 1, which encompassed a big chunk of urban Honolulu, Waikiki, and the airport. It was a very diverse area, from exclusive hotels to flophouses, the glitz of Waikiki to the fading exotic charm of Chinatown, the office towers of downtown to the residential neighborhoods of Makiki and Moiliili. The one thing that linked them was that people committed murders there, and Ray and I tried to bring the bad guys to justice. We didn’t always succeed, but we tried, and that was what mattered.
It was close to noon, so on my way in I picked up fast food for myself and Ray. “Thank God for whoever invented the hamburger,” he said when I handed his bag to him.
While I ate I checked for messages about our other ongoing cases. When I finished, I turned to Ray.
“I got into the records department online to see who owned the warehouse,” he said, talking around his lunch. “The main structure was built in 1950 by a company called F&K Enterprises. It traded hands a few times, and the most recent owner is an offshore company called Inline Imports Ltd. They’ve been paying taxes on the property but as far as I can tell it hasn’t been used for anything for a while.”
“Except file storage,” I said. “You find anything about this Inline Imports?”
“Not yet. You want to call your guy at the department of business licenses?”
Ricky Koele was a couple of years behind me at Punahou, the elite private school where my parents sent my brothers and me—which boasted a U. S. president among its alumni as well. I’m sure Barack Obama has given Punahou a lot more to brag about than all three of the Kanapa’aka brothers.
A few years before I had helped Ricky get some justice in the murder of his brother, an addict who had gotten into deep trouble, and since then Ricky had been glad to help me with any research I needed.
“Aloha, brah,” I said, when he answered. “Howzit?”
“Pretty good, Kimo. How’s life for you?”
“I’d say pretty good, too. Listen, can you do some quick research for me? I’m looking for information on a company called Inline Imports Ltd. They own a warehouse on Lagoon Drive that burned down this morning.”
“I heard about that fire on the radio as I was driving to work,” he said. “Let me see what I can pull up.” He put me on hold so I could listen to KINE 105 FM, the Hawaiian music station. They were playing an oldie by the Brothers Cazimero, the kind of ukulele music I’d grown up listening to, and I remembered school mornings, the radio playing as my mom struggled to get us ready for school. My brothers, Lui and Haoa, are ten and eight years older than I am, so they were bustling around with the self-importance of teenagers when I was a pesky little brother, getting underfoot as they primped in front of the mirror, lied about homework, and tried to figure out ways to scam my parents out of extra allowance.
Ricky came back on the line as the next song was starting, Keali’i Reichel’s sweet tenor on “Every Road Leads Back to You.”
“Can’t give you much,” Ricky said. “It’s an offshore registration in Samoa.”
“Samoa? That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“We’re seeing more of them these days. They guarantee confidentiality and don’t report income to the U.S. All you need is a local nominee director, shareholder and secretary for the incorporation.”
“You have that information?”
“Sorry, you’re going to have to request that from the government there.”
“Anything else in the file? Local address, banking, anything?”
There was nothing. Ricky apologized again and I told him it wasn’t his fault, that I would research how to petition the Samoan government for the information.
“So we’ve got nothing,” Ray said, when I told him.
“There’s the serial number from the artificial hip,” I said.
“I already called Doc Takayama’s office. A couple of the digits are worn down, and it’s going to take a while to retrieve them and trace the number back to the manufacturer.”
“I have one more lead.” I told Ray about spotting Dakota in the warehouse neighborhood.
“You think he might have had something to do with the arson and the murder?”
“Don’t know. But I’m wondering what he was doing out there, and if he saw anything.”
“You know where he lives?”
I frowned. It wasn’t like we took attendance at those meetings, or had kids sign in with name, phone and email address. It was very casual. I shook my head.
“Last name?” Ray asked.
“Nope.”
Ray sighed. “I love a case where you have to work for every lead.”
“This may not even be one.” I pulled out my phone. “Let me text one of the other kids from the group and see if he knows anything more.”
Frankie was one of my long-term regulars. He’d started coming to the group when he was fourteen, a shy chubby boy who liked to wear his hair long and circle his eyes with makeup. He had blossomed over the five years to a full-blown queen who wore plus-size rayon Hawaiian shirts from the fifties, painted his fingernails black, and had multiple, elaborate piercings on his ears and eyebrows.
U know where I cn find Dakota? I texted him. He was one of my success stories; he was in his second year at Honolulu Community College, getting his AS in Audio Engineering Technology, with a part-time job processing audio files for computer games.
The answer came back almost immediately. Dakota n trouble. Cn u meet @ HCC?
HCC was part of the University of Hawai’i system, with a campus on Dillingham out near the airport. Sure, I texted back. When & where?
4:00, outside bldg 13. CU.
As I put the phone down, our boss came out of the elevator, then crossed the room toward us. Lieutenant Sampson is a big guy, a former minor league baseball player who filled out as he got older. Though he normally favored polo shirts and dark slacks, that morning he was wearing his official uniform.
“My office,” he said to us.
Like obedient dogs, we hopped up and followed him across the bullpen to his glassed-in office. He motioned us to the two chairs across from his desk, then sat down. “Meeting with the top brass this morning. We’re getting pressure from the Feds to delegate a couple of detectives to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Your names came up.”
The JTTF is a program run by the FBI, where local cops work cases under the auspices of the Bureau. Despite the fancy name, in Honolulu most of the cases involve violent crime and gangs, rather than terrorists.
“Why us?” I asked.
“You’ve both got a very varied record. You’ve worked cases that involved Chinese tongs and the Japanese Yakuza, as well as prostitution, illegal immigration, drug smuggling and arson. And Donne has some background with the Feds in Philadelphia.”
“Just a couple of cases,” Ray said.
“Even so. You guys look like the best candidates.”
“You’re sending us over there?” I asked.
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea. I was happy in District 1, with Sampson as my boss and Ray as my partner. We did good work, bringing bad guys to justice and giving their victims some sense of closure. If we were loaned out to the Bureau, we’d be cogs in the giant Federal machine, learning a whole new set of rules and regulations and working with lots of unknown factors.
“Not yet,” Sampson said. “The brass are still negotiating. May be a couple of weeks, may not be for a few months yet. They’re going to start with extensive background checks on both of you. Any reason why those shouldn’t come out clean?”
“Hold on,” Ray said. “So we don’t have any choice?”
“This is HPD we’re talking about,” Sampson said. “You know as well as I do that your assignments are made to accommodate the department’s needs, not your own preferences.”
When I passed the exam to become a detective, I was assigned to a test project, an effort at community policing that placed homicide detectives at local stations. My partner and I worked out of the Kalakaua Avenue station in Waikiki. At the time, I’d been warned about the job—that it was doomed to failure, and that when it fell apart I’d be screwed because I had no relationship with command.
My life and career went into a tailspin about the same time that project fell apart, and I considered myself damned lucky that Lieutenant Sampson had picked me up for his squad. I had worked for nearly nine months without a partner, until Sampson hired Ray and assigned us to work together. That was three and a half years before. Since then we had become comfortable with each other, complementing each other’s skill set, finding the best way to work within the HPD system.
“I’m waiting,” Sampson said. “Anything in either of your records the FBI won’t like?”
“Every stupid thing I’ve done is public record,” I said. “I went behind my boss’s back in Waikiki and shot and killed a man who was later proven guilty of murder. I had sex with a male prostitute, though I didn’t know he was being paid, and photos were uploaded to a website. Since taken down, of course. My life has been an open book for the last four and half years.”
Sampson nodded, and we both looked at Ray.
“Before I became a cop in Philly, I smoked dope and tried a few other illegal substances. My cousin, who was also my best friend, was killed in a drug deal gone wrong.” He looked at Sampson. “Will they investigate Julie, too?”
Sampson nodded. “And Mike.”
Ray took a deep breath. “Julie did some dumb things when she was younger, before she met me. But that’s all behind her now.”
Julie? Dumb things? Ray had never spoken about that to me. I’d always assumed she was a goody-goody, like him. Yeah, I knew he’d dabbled in drugs, back in college, but who hadn’t? For the most part, Ray was as honest and upright as ... well, it’s hard to come up with a good metaphor these days, what with the unmasking of priests, ministers, even Boy Scouts and their leaders.
“I’d rather not talk about them, if that’s all right,” Ray said. “But if the investigation could hurt her, I don’t want to be a part of it.”
“Is there a criminal record involved?” Sampson asked.
Ray hesitated.
I spoke up. “A juvenile record that’s been sealed?”
Ray nodded.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Sampson said. “Now, tell me about this case you caught this morning.”
So as long as our records came up clean, we were going to the FBI. Great.
“There isn’t much.” I described the warehouse fire, the lack of records for property ownership, and the wait for identification of the serial number on the artificial hip.
“Anything on the arson yet?” Sampson asked.
I shook my head. “Mike’s working on it. He’ll call when he has something.”
“You can get back to work,” Sampson said. “Keep me in the loop.”